Welcome, then, to the new England order. Which looks, on the face of it, quite a lot like the old England order. This friendly international had been trailed in the match programme as the start of “a new journey”, a moment of fresh starts and new cycles and general youthful evolution. And yet England’s 1-0 victory here felt like something more painfully familiar, from the awkward, angular early exchanges, that sense of England’s players struggling always to control a ball that simply wants to bounce too much; right down to the tiny speckles of moribund hope, of talent unexpressed and potential unexplored, that decorated a night of second-rate international football at a stadium wreathed in a predictable fug of post-World Cup ennui.

On nights like these poring over England’s failings always feels a bit like pummelling the rib cage of a broken man. Indeed, as underpowered sporting occasions go this post-tournament belch of an autumn friendly always looked like a gimme. And yet such is England’s capacity to sink to the occasion right now that it was still possible to feel a little startled by the stodginess of a performance of lumpen but willing intent from a team lassoed for the occasion into a depressingly rigid meat-and-potatoes 4-4-2 that leant the whole evening a peculiarly dank, retro air.

It is, of course, much more challenging to search for glimmers of hope in among the beeps and pings of the life-support machines. For England there was one obvious bright spot and a few supporting flickers. Raheem Sterling, stationed on the left wing in defiance of all evidence of his attacking fluency, was an obvious man of the match and made the goal that settled the game, drawing a foul inside the Norway area with another fine, upright, scuttling surge. The penalty kick was expertly converted by Wayne Rooney, who scarcely had to move from his customary position clamped at the central edge of the penalty area to take it.

Daniel Sturridge was a nimble-footed presence at the point of England’s attack. John Stones had a decent game at right-back. Otherwise if there were grounds for hope they were simply that this was at least a relatively new England team out there playing like the same old England team as Hodgson picked seven players aged 25 or under. What youthfulness! What brio! What stifling tactical rigidity!

Indeed England were almost alarmingly muted at times in the first half. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back again. Forth again. Watching the lateral movements of England’s four-square midfield there was a danger some in the crowd might have been lulled to sleep like deck hands in hammocks. There is above all a sense of trapped energy about all this. The modern full-back is a wonderfully potent force at times, just as the footballing world is currently rife with roving attacking midfielders. And yet in this suffocating truss of a formation England are denied access to any of this, the full-backs running a straight line around halfway and only Sterling’s natural adventure drawing him inside into areas he can be most effective

It is baffling that anybody who saw Sterling’s contribution from the tip of the attacking diamond in Liverpool’s win at White Hart Lane on Sunday would want to isolate him on the left wing, beyond the obvious need to accommodate Rooney in his own preferred role. And indeed at times there seemed to be two England teams playing simultaneously: the one with Sterling and Sturridge and (in glimpses) Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain in it, all fleet-footed, if slightly ragged, attacking ambition. And then the rest, pegged out in those familiar straight lines, with Rooney not just immobile but strangely deathly in that muted No10 role, the clogged artery at the heart of this England team.

There will be much debate about systems, more specifically the one Hodgson reverted to here, abandoning the 4-2-3-1 seized on before the World Cup like a middle-aged man desperately squeezing himself into the nearest pair of tactical skinny jeans. And yet it would be wrong to fixate on formations. Not only is 4-4-2 itself experiencing a cautious revival (Atlético Madrid won La Liga with a high-energy variation last season), but as many sage judges have pointed out, international football is less about systems as about players in the end, the indivisible base metal that your system provides.

With this in mind, if there were some tempting parallels to be drawn between the presence of Norway at Wembley and the travails of Graham Taylor and the team that could not “knock it” 21 years ago, there is undoubtedly a broader sense of pessimism now. Even in the throes of that doomed World Cup qualifying campaign under Taylor there was still some vague hope then that the newly booming Premier League would eventually provide, that English football’s grand schematic makeover would involve spending just a moment or two ironing out the knots in the England team.

And yet quite the opposite has happened. The success of the Premier League has brought with it a profound developmental strangulation of young English talent. The players were willing, as ever, at Wembley, and some belated relief arrived late on in the final post-Rooney minutes when that portable pall of gloom seemed to lift a little. Rooney will be comforted by having scored his 41st England goal on his captaincy debut. But England were undeniably more fluid, as they were against Italy in Manaus, with Sterling in that central role and two quick mobile forwards ahead of him.

Not that this matters particularly. Hodgson will not drop his captain for the Euro 2016 qualifier against Switzerland in Basel on Monday. And while there will be frustration at the restraints imposed by some overly linear tactics, the greater sense of waste lies in the evidence here and in Brazil of a shallow, and strangely unassertive pool of talent.

And of another new era dawning, once again, with a familiarly muted thud.